Saturday, August 27, 2016

Most Black people have well above average intelligence. We have to just to survive in America. Every day, from the time we get up, until the time we go to bed we have to navigate our way through all manner of bigotry, both overt and covert. Racism is so pervasive in the lives of Black people that many of us don't even have to think about the intellectual strategies necessary to outwit most bigots - we do it on autopilot. As a result, we've developed an intellectual muscularity that we don't even have to think about.
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As Naturalist Charles Darwin pointed out in his book, On the Origin of Species, all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. In other words, the adversity that Black people have been forced to endure over the centuries has caused nature to step in to enhance our innate intellectual abilities in order to help us to survive in a hostile environment. So the adversity that we’ve endured over the centuries is serving to make Black people MORE rather than less. It is causing us to evolve as we speak, but it's up to Black people themselves to recognize, develop, and utilize that potential.
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A HOME IN THE BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS

SUBBURB OF BALDWIN HILLS, CA.

President Barack Obama, and the Imafidon family at the bottom of this article, are graphic examples of the fact that the evolutionary process mentioned above may already be revealing itself. As the son of an African immigrant, in ONE generation Barack Obama rose to become one of this nation's greatest presidents, and he possessed the intellectual muscularity to handle the entire Republican establishment like they were a group of irate children. He also saved the world from a second Great Depression, and if it weren't for the Republican Party's eight-year tantrum of ignorant, racist, and childish obstructionism, America would undoubtedly be experiencing the greatest era in its history at this very moment. And then there's the Imafidons, a Nigerian family, acknowledged as THE most brilliant FAMILY in the United Kingdom.
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Those facts are significant when it comes to defining what Black people represent. But facts such as these tend to be ignored, or played down in a bigot drenched America, because they don't conform to America's preferred view of reality. America prefers to define Black people based upon the images of the most dysfunctional among us. But I intend to explode that myth, not only for the average uninformed White person, but for the many Black people who have been brainwashed by the mass media into embracing their tainted view of reality. If we portrayed White people in the same way that Black people are being portrayed, all White people would be seen as hillbillies.
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As I've mentioned in a previous article, racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them." Well, here are the facts:
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In the Live Science Article, Low IQ And Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice, it states unequivocally that "There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy." That's what drives radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they were so determined not to allow President Obama to be as successful as he could have been, even if it meant destroying the country.
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But Obama's not the only chink in their armor. These people feel such a desperate need to be superior that they’ll go to any length to try to substantiate that claim, even if they have to corrupt both logic and reality to make it conform to their point of view. For example, how can they claim to be superior to Black people while at the same time claim that America is such a devoutly Christian Nation? If Jesus Christ had been born in the desert with blond hair and blue eyes they wouldn’t have had to crucify him - he would have died of Sunburn. Jesus Christ was a man of color. So how can you claim to be superior to a man that you also claim to worship? One would think that a “superior race” would have recognized the flaw in that logic.
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So now this entire nation, including the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusion of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it. That's what makes it so important for Black people to begin to develope the innate intelligence that we've been both hiding, and/or, holding a cultural antagonism toward.
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What do I mean by a cultural antagonism toward intelligence?
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The root of the problem that we’ve traditionally had in the Black community among the more dysfunctional among us is not a lack of intelligence but our attitude toward knowledge. As a direct result of our history of slavery, we’ve developed a sort of hostility toward both knowledge, Black people who embrace it, and/or, tend to display an exceptional level intelligence. We tend to equate the pursuit of knowledge with selling out. We also tend to see the active pursuit of knowledge as part of the White man’s domain, so we look upon Black people who have a love of knowledge with disdain, because we see them as "trying to be White."
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KRIS KROSS WEARING THEIR

PANTS BACKWARDS

The reason for that is simple. During slavery the only Black people we knew who spoke anything close to "proper English" were the "house niggas," and many house slaves had a tendency to look down their noses at slaves who worked in the field. As a result of that experience, many Blacks have an hostility toward "proper talkin'" Black people that persist to this day. So many highly intelligent Black people will often try to hide their intelligence, because, ironically, over the years we’ve developed an attitude where many feel that we have a moral obligation to remain ignorant in order to prove that we take pride in being Black. Think about that. Isn't it ironic that many of us embrace ignorance as a sign of Black pride? That's why we can hear many educated young Black people going around saying things like, "What it is?", "What it be like?." and other obvious assaults on the English language. They know it's improper English, but they see it as giving credibility to their pride in being Black. Some young people would put their shoes on backwards if they could just to show how unlike White people they are, and one hip hop group, Kris Kross, actually did wear their pants backwards.
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That attitude among some Blacks was one of the weapons that was used against President Obama by many envious Black intellectuals. They tried to use his "all-American" conventionality against him. They attempted to convince the Black community of the following:
."I’m cool - see my long, wooly Afro, how cool I act, and how I can quote Lil’ Wayne when I’m on television? I’m one of y’all. I just have enough intelligence to speak the White man’s language, so I’m keeping an eye on him for the people. But that Obama, he’s not like us. He don’t have no Afro, he don’t never quote Lil Wayne, and he’s obviously much too intelligent to be trusted as a genuine Black man. He thinks like the White man."
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So even as Black "intellectuals," many send the message to Black youth that intelligence is the White man's domain, and that being Black and intelligent are incompatible - and ironically, many Black people have become more wedded to that attitude than White people. The message isn't overt, because we claim to be seekers of knowledge, but it can be clearly seen in our daily interactions with one another.
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An example of that is reflected in a joke that I wrote for a comedienne by the name of Frances Nealy. I spoke of a new kid in school who continued to enthusiastically raise his hand to answer all of the teacher's questions. Finally a kid in the back of the class said, "Who IS this dude!!!? He must think he White or somethin'!" What made that a joke was it put it's finger on the underlying attitude of many Black people pointed out above.

WHAT DID THESE PEOPLE DO TO DESERVE BEING CALLED SELL-OUTS?
.JIM CROW
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Another reason that Black people have a tradition of hiding their intelligence is through necessity. During the Jim Crow era many White folks saw a smart Black man as an "uppity nigga," and it could get him lynched, because a smart Black man was a challenge to what bigots wanted to believe - that they were superior. Again, that's why they hate Barack Obama - and I've been surprised to see how deep seated that attitude is today, even among many White people who claim to be liberals. I've noticed over the internet that many White people believe that a Black person should defer to them in a debate, even if they're proven to be dead wrong. A Black person can say the very same thing to them as another White person, but they'll view the Black person as being arrogant - "How dare this spook try to make me look like an idiot!!!?" (Well, because you are).
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When my mother was in nursing school my grandparents virtually raised me - we were connected at the hip. and my mother was more like an older sister that they allowed to play house with me from time to time. But every year my grandparents would go back to Louisiana to visit for a week, and every year they had to keep their pending trip a secret, because the moment I found out about it, it was absolutely ON until the car turned the corner headed for the airport. I wanted to go with them, but my grandfather wouldn't let me.
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I could get them to cave-in on most things, but on this, my grandfather stood absolutely firm. He said, "Eric, I wouldn't take you no farther South than San Diego, because you talk too much, and you could get us killed.You've got to learn to listen to what's on everybody else's mind, and never let anyone know what's on yours, because if you tell the another man everything that's on your mind, he'll then know everything you know, plus what he already knew, and that'll make him smarter than you. So that's why you have to stay home - because we can't afford to let those White folks down South know more about us, than we know about them." That was the thinking of many Jim Crow era Black people, and they also knew something that's true even today - one of the fastest ways in the world to lose a job in America is to let your boss know that you're smarter than he is. So for all of those reasons, Black people have developed a tradition of hiding their intellect.
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But at this point in our history it's time for Black people to come out of the closet and change that strategy, and for the very same reason - survival. We're living in a different world today, a world where you can't survive without using all of the intellect and knowledge at your disposal. So we've got to prepare our children to survive in a world of science, technology, and political manipulation. They can no longer simply demonstrate and shake their fists at the establishment and expect results. All the establishment is going to do is wait a couple of weeks until they cool off, and then it'll be business as usual. We see that strategy currently being played out against the Black Lives Matter movement at this very moment. So our children have got to understand that we can't out-scream the establishment, because they control the media; and we can't out-fight them, because they control the military; thus, the only option left is to out-think them. So we've got to prepare ourselves to assume positions of power and authority, and we've got to learn, as a culture, not to be self-serving, and to recognize the advantages of sticking together in order to jerk the chains of political power most effectively.
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TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON

THE BILL CLINTON AWARD FOR SCHOLARSHIPOUTSTANDING STUDENT OF THE YEAR KIWANIS CLUB OF RIALTO

Our children already have the intellectual potential to meet those challenges, but it's up to the parents to convince them of that fact, and to impart the importance of doing so. Life isn't about just being cute, or cool anymore, so they can no longer afford to just sit around, party, and get high like many of us did, because the election of Donald Trump sends a very clear and emphatic message - it's crisis time. So we've got to stop letting our young people be programed regarding who they are by the corporate media, because as long as Black people are better known for dancing than we are thinking, we'll always be under the White man's thumb. That isn't to say we should ban our kids from consuming pop culture, but we should discuss these issues with them, and point out how they're being manipulated.
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These are horrible times for this country, but they present a prime opportunity for the Black community to level the playing field . While the establishment is pulling every lever at its disposal to dumb the rest of America down, we have the opportunity to pull every lever at our disposal in pursuit of knowledge and leveraging our innate intellectual competence. So it's all about thinking, instead of just shaking our fists.
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For that reason, every time our children did anything exceptional, my late wife and I made a big deal of it - like when my daughter, Kai, taught me how to factor when she was in the 6th grade, while university professors couldn't do it. We made a big deal out of that - in fact, it was a big deal, because I was struggling with

TAYLOR WATTREE-JACKSON

PRE-MED

JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY

that class.
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For some reason my math professor just couldn’t get the concept of factoring across to me, but Kai did it in about 10 minutes by simply drawing a little tree and then hanging numbers on its branches. We praised her to high Heaven. That rewarded her for thinking, instead of just being able to dance. We also had this little game where you had to insert various geometric-shaped blocks into the proper slots before it popped up. Kai and Eric could do it with time to spare, but I never did master that game. They loved it, and it gave them confidence in their abilities, because it clearly demonstrated to them that they were better at some things than their parents were, and that's a big deal to children. So we always went out of our way to let them know that they weren't average, because “average is the best of the worst, and the worst of the best,” and they were better than that. We also always treated them like peers rather than children, and while always respectful, they acted that way.
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Today Kai is a Human Resources Specialist for her college alma mater and the Vice President of the California College Employee’s Association, And Eric is a Special Agent for the United States Department of Justice. Here’s what the Air Force had to say about him:
.23 April 2002

MEMORANDUM FOR OFFICER TRAINING SCHOOL SELECTION COMMITTEE
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FROM: 92 SFS/SFO
2 E. ARNOLD STREET
FAIRCHILD AFB, WA 99011

SUBJECT: Recommendation for Staff Sergeant Eric L. Wattree

ERIC WATTREE, JR.

1. I wholeheartedly concur with Staff Sergeant Wattree’s request to attend Officer Training School. He represents the enlisted ranks with the highest standard and will bring that dedication and professionalism to the officer corps.2. Eric continues to lead a stellar military career; his enlisted performance reports speak for themselves. His leadership and experience, especially in contingency environments, remains a vital asset to our unit and wing. As one of my primary Phoenix Raven team leaders, he’s propelled to the forefront of all major deployments throughout the world. He’s repeatedly secured aircraft and crews, supporting a wide variety of missions, in the most austere and terrorist-ridden environments where security is severely inadequate. The diversity of these missions never limited SSgt Wattree’s capacity to adapt to each situation. For this reason, Eric was selected as our 2000 Outstanding Phoenix Raven Member of the Year and the 2001 Air Force Reserve Component Airman of the Year for the 92d Security Forces Squadron.
3. Whether operating under peacetime or contingency operations, Eric easily assumes control and tackles every situation with meticulous tenacity, a quality highly desired in our Air Force officers. Requested by name, Sergeant Wattree, provided security for presidential Banner missions throughout Greece, Peru and Viet Nam. While deployed to Afghanistan, he flew numerous combat missions in our nation’s pursuit to eradicate terrorism through Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Additionally, he provided round-the-clock force protection for aircraft in other high-threat environments including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Oman. 4. Sergeant Wattree motivated his personnel during the worst conditions and raised the level of esprit de corps to integrate personnel from other Air Force specialties into a cohesive team. His leadership, integrity and devotion to our Air Force play an integral part in our future leadership. Eric has what it takes to become a commissioned officer and earns my full support to attend Officer Training School.

When Eric was discharged after his four-year tour, he was contacted by the Air Force and asked to return by “Special Request.” But that didn’t last long, because as an Air Force Raven (Special Forces) he worked in concert with the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and various other security agencies, so the federal government snatched him up. The agent who did his security clearance came to my home and told me, “Your son could get any security job in the federal government - I’m just glad he doesn’t want mine.”
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I couldn't help but get a little choked up when he told me that, because all I could think of was that timid little boy who used to peek out at the world from behind his older sister, and get into bed with me and Val at night because he was afraid of the dark. And on 4th of July he would get in the car and roll up the windows because he was afraid of the fireworks. He was, literally, the family's pudgy-jawed little baby boy, and frankly, I was concerned about what was going to become of him when his sister grew up and moved on with her life.
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ME AND MY BABY BOY - BEFORE HE EVOLVED

But in high school he sprung up in just one year, and in college he continued to morph, and now the government was here telling me that he's this 6'6", 250 lb. American hero. "Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that my timid baby boy is Buck Rogers!!!? Where did that come from?" I couldn't believe it, and neither could my wife. When they arranged for Val and I to be brought out to attend his credentials ceremony at Quantico, they had a congressman there, but they stopped the ceremony just long enough to talk about who Eric was, and his exploits even in training, and my wife asked me, "Are they talking about OUR Eric?" And I said, Yes they are, baby. But I don't think she ever did reconcile the difference between her little boy and the man that he later became. Actually, even after all this time, neither have I. Is this evolution at work? I can't say with any degree of certainty, but what I can say is, it's been a chilling and fascinating thing to watch. Today, when I look into his eyes, there's absolutely nothing left of that timid little boy that I once knew. All I see is a dead serious, no-nonsense manhood, and without a bit of posturing, pretentiousness, or macho swagger. What I now see, is what manhood is suppose to look like.
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BARACK - BEFORE HE EVOLVED

So we don't know what potential lies dormant within our children. Thus, we must begin to instill the pursuit of excellence and the power of knowledge in them at birth, and never let up. We must also become their number one “road dawg,” and not just sit back and expect them to be educated by others, because we ARE what we think. The very purpose of Jim Crow was to keep us from knowing that. So think big, and teach your children to do likewise. Let us make the pursuit of knowledge and intellect the new "soul" within the Black community. We must set a goal where when the world thinks of Black people, they think of brilliance, competence, and accomplishment, not just "soul."

Monday, August 22, 2016

PROLOGUE

AN APPEAL TO PRESERVE BLACK CULTURE

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I’m a lifelong musician who’s been devoted to jazz every since I was a child, and I take great pride in what jazz has contributed to the Black community, America, and the world. I also have a deep devotion to my culture. For both of those reasons I’ve decided to devote much of my waking hours to the promotion of a woman who I’m convinced is highly significant to what Black people represent as a culture, and as an artistic force in the world. Her name is Rita Edmond, and she’s come along at just the right time, because the jazz world really needs someone like her now. But due to America’s current self-serving environment, its elitist media is completely ignoring her, and it’s a slap in the face of jazz. It’s, literally, like ignoring Sarah Vaughan.
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But this situation is not just a result of the White establishment alone. It’s also a result of what many Black people have allowed themselves to become. It’s sad that I even have to make this appeal for an artist of this caliber. In the past, jazz flourished because musicians promoted one another. Back in the day Jimmy Heath would have told a promoter or club owner, “If you like me, you’ll also like a guy by the name John Coltrane. You need to check him out.” Jimmy would do that in the name of jazz, because he recognized that by promoting jazz, he was also promoting himself. Thelonious Monk even went to jail for Bud Powell to prevent Bud from being barred from playing in New York, because Monk knew that Bud was good for jazz. But today the attitude seems to be, “I got mine, so you’re just gonna to have to struggle like I did.” Many even go so far as to HIDE possible connections - and then we wonder why our traditions are disappearing. So the very last thing we should want is for someone like Rita Edmond to be a secret, because she’s not just another singer; she’s without a doubt one of the most significant jazz divas alive in the world today.
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As Black people, we’ve got to start recognizing our priorities. This is our CULTURE we’re talking about here, and the failure to promote it whenever, and however, we can only serves to diminish it. Yet, many Black people fail to support the very best in who we are. Rita has only one stumbling block - when it comes to the Black culture, the American media has conditioned us to fixate on only one thing, the booty-shacking frivolity of entertainment. I’m not criticizing entertainment, but a culture has to be recognized for more than just shaking their booty to gain and maintain the world’s respect. It was the dazzling technical abilities of people like Dizzy, Bird, Monk and Miles that made the world begin to recognize that there was much more to Black people than the slow-minded Stepin Fetchit-like people in which we had previously been portrayed. Thus, it was the seriousness of jazz as an art form that brought the Black culture into the modern world, and musicologists at universities and conservatories all over this planet are still scratching their heads and trying to figure out what Bird was doing over 60 years after his death.
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In that regard, people in nations as far flung as Russia and Thailand have thrown flowers at Rita’s feet, fans have come to Thailand from as far away as Japan just to hear her sing, and when she was leaving Russia people met her at the train station with roses, and a young piano prodigy (whose father brought him to several of Rita’s performances) ran up and hugged her. These people gave her that kind of love because they recognize and appreciate excellence, and they know that Rita is a part of a great tradition. But most importantly, these people haven’t been subjected to the Hillbilly mentality of America’s attitude towards Black culture. So they see this woman for what she is - a world-class talent. Rita Edmond is not just an entertainer . . . she’s an artist - and one of the world’s greatest. Check her out for yourself:
.Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
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If you’re a jazz lover and want to look upon the contemporary face of jazz royalty, take a moment to go check out Ms. Rita Edmond on Youtube. She's the jazz world's best kept secret. She's currently working on her third CD, but even on her first CD, she made it abundantly clear to this writer that she hit the ground fully seasoned as one of the greatest jazz singers alive today. I know, that's a mighty lofty claim to heap onto the shoulders of a relatively new artist, but I'm not given to hyperbole, so I fully intend to back up my assertion with the contents and attachments to this piece.

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Ms. Edmond moves between sultry sophistication, hard driving swing, and childlike innocence without any effort at all. There are many great singers out there , but from the very first bar of anything Rita does, she clearly distinguishes herself as one of those rare individuals who was born to do exactly what she’s doing, and nothing else. She swings with the effortless grace of a Sliver Shadow cruisin' down Pacific Coast Highway, and her ballads are lush with sultry passion, personal depth, and individuality.

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You can't "learn" to sing like Rita Edmond. You either have it, or you don't, and there's only one or two lucky few in a generation who do - but Rita, like Ella and Sarah, is one of those lucky few. But don’t just take my word for it, go check her out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that she’s a once in a generation talent, and clearly the heir apparent to some of the greatest divas that jazz has ever known.

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Along with this piece I'm attaching three links to make my point - ‘Here’s to Life,’ ‘Embraceable You' (Live at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) , and ‘It Might As Well Be Spring’ - and each tune shows a different side of her tremendous, and still growing, musical personality.

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‘Here’s to Life’ is a beautiful ballad that’s been done by some of the greatest singers who’s ever lived, yet Ms. Edmond’s version is as good or better than any version of this tune that’s ever been recorded. The soaring passion that she brings to this tune makes it almost impossible for anyone who’s ever had to struggle through life’s adversities to listen to with a dry eye. Artie Butler - the multi-Grammy Award winning composer (and Barbara Streisand's musical director) - said of Ms. Edmond, "Rita Edmond knows exactly what to do with a song like 'Here's To Life.' She brings the listener into the music as she sings, making you feel she's singing just for you. That's indeed a gift."

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'Embraceable You,' (featuring Harold Land, Jr. on piano) demonstrates the ease in which she can establish the mood of a song and captivate an audience. It also shows an artist who is so comfortable in serenading an audience that it seems like she was born on stage. And after the piano solo, notice the effortless spontaneity in which she throws in a lick that's so exquisite that it sounds like it should have been written into the tune. You won't be able to miss it because the audience places an exclamation point of approval immediately afterward, as she casually, and routinely, moves on to the next phrase, as though it's all in a night's work.

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Rita Edmond and Phil Woods Protégé and International

Jazz Great, Robert Anchipolosky

Finally, she does ‘It Might As Well Be Spring,’ a tried and true jazz standard. Not everyone can do this tune well, because it’s such a jazz staple that it’s hard for a singer to put their personal stamp on it, and whenever they try, they either over sing or under sing the tune. But Rita swings through it effortlessly and makes it her own. King Pleasure himself would smile at her rendition.

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I also wanted to add Ms. Edmond's rendition of ‘This Can’t Be Love’ as an attachment, but unfortunately, it's not available on Youtube. Nevertheless, it deserves a mention. On that tune Ms. Edmond displays yet another part of her musical vocabulary - her growing chops as a scatter and her ability to swing with the best of them. In this case, she scats in unison with yet another powerhouse, tenor sax player Ricky Woodard, and they’re pushed forward by the hard driving rhythms of Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath of the illustrious Heath Brothers on drums - and when it comes to the aristocracy of jazz, they don’t come any more blue-blooded than Tootie. She's also regularly accompanied by Nancy Wilson's keyboard player, Llew Matthews, who has also played with legendary jazz giants such as Jackie McLean and Woody Shaw, and the sweet-struttin' Edwin Livingston on bass. So Rita is regularly being tested by fire, and she literally dances through the flames with blissful abandon.

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Earlier this year Ms. Edmond toured Russia, bringing the house down with the late Phil Woods' protégé, Robert Anchipolosky, and at this writing she's wrapping up a three month gig at the luxurious Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, where she's doing her part to show jazz lovers, politicians, and ambassadors from all over the world what we bring to the table. She's also just completed a project with her good friend and fabulous sax player, Dale Fielder, "Resiliance,"on the Clarion Jazz label that's monstrous. While very contemporary in it's concept, the quality of musicianship is a throwback to the way the big boys used to do it.

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Ms. Edmond approaches jazz like she's been here before; it's like she walked on stage fresh from 52nd Street. For that reason, whenever I hear her sing it makes my eyes moist, because I can here Ella and Sarah whispering softly in the background, "Show 'em how it's done, baby girl." And she has a natural musical kinship to Dexter Gordon, whether she's singing a ballad or swinging, and when you're as familiar with Dexter Gordon's music as I am (his family lived two blocks away from my grandparents, and my mother went to Jefferson High School with him), it's a scary thing to watch. Her approach to phrasing and the feeling she evokes is the exactly the same kind of feeling that Dexter had on his tenor. I played Dexter for her doing "You've Changed," and she said, "Hey! He sounds just like me!" I had to laugh. I told her, "No, Rita, You sound like HIM."

Rita with the former Australian Ambassador,

Ireland Ambassador, and the

Portuguese Ambassador

But in spite of her talent, Ms. Edmond is a very innocent sort whose emotions are always very close to the surface - I think that may be the key to the beauty of her musicianship, but in spite of her unassuming manner, when she picks up a mic someone else emerges. Just the touch of a mic seems to transform her. It gives her a tremendous confidence, and a unique sense of individualism that serves to produce a flawless musical delivery - a delivery that seems to say, “There’s a new diva in town,” and I say, it’s about time!
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PS: Something just happened that made my blood run cold. I didn't know whether or not it was appropriate to mention it in the context of this article, but it was such a coincident that I feel that I would be remiss if I didn't say something about it. As I was writing about the kinship of the music of Dexter Gordon and Rita Edmond - before I posted - I received a contact. It was from Dexter's wife, Maxine Gordon (or as Dex would call her, "Lady Gordon"). She sent me a friend request. My last contact with her was over two years ago, so that was one hell of a coincident . . . or was it?

Saturday, August 13, 2016

TAKING A STAND FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:
I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED OUT OF MY VOTE

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into this election, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if we want to survive we've got to bring the corruption of our democracy to an end. So I'm taking a stand right here and right now - I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED OUT OF MY VOTE, and I'm not gonna let anybody send me on a guilt trip talking about Donald Trump. That’s political subterfuge, an attempt by the Clinton forces to Blackmail the electorate into voting for Hillary, whose history clearly shows that she's every bit as bad as Trump. The only difference between Hillary and Trump is Hillary has sense enough to tailor her lies on the issues in a way that accommodate the agenda of whoever she happens to be talking to at the time. In addition, we can only speculate about what trump might do, but we’ve already SEEN the atrocities that the Clintons are capable of committing against the Black community.
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.“But she won the nomination,” they say.
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No, she didn’t win the nomination - she stole it. When she hired Debbie Wasserman-Schultz she not only confirmed that fact, but she thumbed her nose at us in the process. I had planned to hold my nose and vote for Hillary, but the arrogance of the Wasserman-Shultz episode was the final straw for me. It said that the voice of the average citizen doesn't matter, and that’s a direct threat to our democracy. Why should I vote for a politician, or a party, who deprived me of my right to choose?
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And the Clintons have shown that very same kind of arrogant disregard for the people and our laws repeatedly - like when Bill showed up at a Massachusetts polling place (where you're not even suppose to wear a Clinton button) and began to electioneer; and again when he casually strolled in to visit Attorney General Loretta Lynch while Hillary was still under active investigation by the FBI; and now they hire the disgraced chairperson of the DNC who was forced to resign for corruption after handing Hillary the nomination. They think they're above the people, and above the law, so the Clinton/Democratic machine and their corporate cronies simply anointed Hillary the nominee just as surely as the U.S. Supreme Court anointed George W. Bush president after the 2000 election. If Barack Obama were running against Hillary Clinton today, he wouldn't have stood a chance - no one would. With their money, corporate ties, and control over the Democratic Party, the people no longer count.
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BILL CLINTON

CASUALLY - AND BLATANTLY - COMMITTING

ELECTION FRAUD AND THUMBING HIS NOSE

AT THE VOTER'S RIGHTS ACT WITH COMPLETE IMPUNITY -AND, IN A BLACK COMMUNITY.

WHAT IS HE DOING IN THIS POLLING PLACE?

Bill and Hillary Clinton have brought fraud, deceit and corruption to the Democratic Party just like they have to everything else they've ever touched in the past 25 years. So to simply sit on our hands and let this assault on our democratic system take place will set a horrible precedent from which the nation may never be able to recover. We should be in a complete uproar over this election fraud - after all, this is OUR VOICE they're stealing - so we should be demanding that everybody involved be run out of politics, if not jailed, not elect them president! This is not a hockey match; we're talking about our democracy here! - a democracy that many who were obviously much more informed and dedicated than we are, were willing to fight and die for. And now, we're just giving it away.
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If we allow Hillary to just slide into the presidency in spite of the now documented evidence of cheating and corruption, this unconscionable assault on our democracy won't just be an ugly aberration, we will be acknowledging it as an accepted practice, giving it tacit approval. Thereafter the corporatists will be able to anoint anybody president that they choose - and they'll be completely free to do so, because as this incident clearly shows, with the Clintons controlling the Democratic Party it's no longer liberals fighting conservatives in order to protect the interest of the people, it's now sibling rivals fighting one another over whose turn it is to exploit the people, so neither party will be willing to fight the excesses of the corporate elites. Thus, the people have simply got to stand up and say, "No, this is not going to happen. Hillary, you've got to step aside," and based on the exposed cheating and corruption the Clintons have engaged in, we have every right to do so. They've forfeited the right to the nomination, but we're just submissively going along with the program like a group of somnambulistic Stepford wives, and that's exactly why our political "employees" don't take us seriously.
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Political corruption is already changing the character of America. A Princeton University study found that the United States is no longer a democracy; it has now become an oligarchy. Researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page indicated that "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." And again, clear evidence of the validity of that fact is after the Democratic Party did contortions to shove Hillary Clinton down our throats as the Democratic nominee, former DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman-Shultz was forced to resign for corruption. Thereafter, she immediately went to work for the Clinton campaign.
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Further evidence of the validity of the Princeton study is reflected in our double standard of justice. The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton was clearly a sham. Just imagine what would happen to you if you worked for the State Department and put classified files on your home computer. Do you think they would worry about your "intent?" I don't think so. What Hillary did is called "Gross (criminal) Negligence" and "Endangering National Security," both, very serious crimes. She should have, at the very least, lost her security clearance, but that would have prevented her from running for president. So in Hillary's case it was just fluffed off, while in another case, Sandra Bland was dragged from her vehicle, brutalized, and died under "suspicious circumstances" while in custody, for smoking a cigarette in her own car. That's the kind of double standard of justice(?) that Americans previously associated with "third world" countries. So now to reward Hillary Clinton with the presidency after she committed such an irresponsible act and then allowed to simply walk away, would send the integrity of our democracy spiraling down a rat hole.
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HILLARY SPENT 6 YEARS ON WAL-MART'S

BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND NEVER LIFTED A FINGER

TO HELP EITHER WOMEN, OR THE WORKERS

“But if we refuse to vote for Hillary, what about the Supreme Court?”
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What about it? Hillary would nominate someone who is just as corrupt as she is and would give her corporate supporters priority over the people. We have children and grandchildren to think about, so it's not enough to just defeat Trump, we must also defend the integrity of this democracy by defeating corruption - and corruption has been Hillary's stock and trade for decades.
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So I’m fighting Hillary just like I would fight David Duke if he'd been shoved down our throat, because Hillary Clinton is nothing short of David Duke in a pants suit and with a smile and a lie on her lips. Thus, if the DNC insists on trying to force-feed us Hillary Clinton, I’m going to vote Green Party, regardless of the consequences. I'll let God sort it out. While I’ll be voting outside the Democratic Party for the first time in my life, that’s their fault, not mine, because I refuse to be either manipulated, or blackmailed, into voting for the Clinton political machine. We May Have Bill Clinton to Thank for Donald Trump's Presidential Run. Bill gave Donald Trump a pep talk just weeks before Trump entered the race. Take a minute to think about that.
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In addition, and as I pointed out in a previous article, the Clintons were involved in Ronald Reagan’s scheme to flood the Black community with crack cocaine in order to fund his illegal war in Nicaragua. That one action completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of Black lives and is still having a negative impact on Black people today. There's currently a huge part of an entire generation of young Black people who don't know anything about their culture, and don't really know what it means to be Black, because the people who were responsible for teaching them were either dead, in prison, or mentally disabled by the affects of crack cocaine. As a direct result, instead of developing their potential and preparing for the future, many of these young people, who were literally raised by the corporate media, have been conditioned to believe that their role in life is to be criminals, drug addicts, and at the very bottom of society. In addition, they're being mesmerized by the media by being fed a constant diet of music that celebrates drug use, killing one another, and referring to the very womb of their culture as "bitches and hoes." So their fate is all but sealed. Yet, many Black people are falling all over one another to put two of the people who are hugely responsible for this state of affairs back into the White House. The situation is beyond sad, it's disgusting. So being forced to choose between Clinton and Trump is like having to choose between cyanide and strychnine.
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In June of last year Politico.com reported, “Donald Trump may be a Republican, but his favorite president of the last four is none other than Bill Clinton,” and that makes perfect sense, because Bill gave him a complete blueprint on how to handle Hispanics, Muslims, and other minorities. According to the United States Census, there were 3.2 million Black slaves in America in 1850. Today more than 4 million Blacks are involved with the prison industrial complex, either incarcerated or on parole. So the prison industrial complex currently controls the lives of more Black people than slave masters did 10 years before the Civil War. We have Bill Clinton (our so-called “First Black President”) to thank for that. Thereafter, the prison industrial complex became one of Hillary’s biggest contributors. Thus, the Clintons have brought a thousand times more harm to the Black community than David Duke and the Klan. If they had done as much harm to the Jewish community, Hillary wouldn’t have even been able to run.
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Therefore, I continue to point out at every opportunity that Bill and Hillary Clinton are conservatives in drag. They walk like liberals, and they talk like liberals, but they always manage to leave conservative policies behind. They've been more successful in passing fiscally conservative legislation than the GOP - the passing of NAFTA, allowing corporations to send $20 an hour jobs out of the country to be performed for $5 an hour in other countries; the gutting of Glass-Steagall, allowing commercial banks to gamble with our deposits, which led directly to the 2008 Wall Street crisis; the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, leading to the dumbing down of America and making propagandist networks like FOX News possible, etc., etc. In addition, their tacit participation in the Mena connection, and then subjecting the resulting victims of their flooding the Black community with drugs to mass incarceration is nothing short of gross bigotry. They're just bigots who keep a smile on their face so they can trot us out when they need us.
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Thus, the working class must come together and tell the corporate establishment that we’re not going to be manipulated or blackmailed into swallowing this tainted meat they’re trying to shove down our throats. If we fail to do so, our democracy may be lost to us forever.
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I can’t repeat this enough - Bill and Hillary Clinton are "Republicrats." Their primary mission in life is to drag the Democratic party to the right. Hillary is the same closet Republican that she’s always been (a Goldwater girl, and President of the “Young Republicans" in college), and Bill is a White Southern Dixiecrat. When Hillary was running against Barack Obama in 2008, in an attempt to get Ted Kennedy's support, Bill Clinton was reported to have said,"A few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags." True liberals don't talk like that. In fact, the reaction of one of my White neighbors to the comment is how I found out about it. She called me screaming over the phone - "Did you hear what that racist bastard said about Barack Obama!!!?" So the Clintons are far from liberal; they're just calculating. They saw which way the wind was blowing during the sixties and then made the cynical decision to take advantage of it. Wikipedia puts it this way:
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“New Democrats, also called Centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats or Moderate Democrats, is an ideologically 'centrist' faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. They are an economically conservative and ‘Third Way’ faction which dominated the party for around 20 years starting in the late 1980s after the US populace turned much further to the political right. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition." So in short, they’re conservatives.
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The New York Times reports:
."Mrs. Clinton’s dogged pursuit of Republican votes has especially rankled progressives, and highlights the divisions within the Democratic Party, even as they see a victory more likely. They have grumbled at her eager promotion of endorsements from veterans of the George W. Bush and Reagan administrations, including that of John D. Negroponte, a top diplomat and intelligence official under Mr. Bush. They worry aloud that Henry Kissinger, of whom Mrs. Clinton has often spoken fondly, could be next . . . 'Secretary Clinton’s decision to aggressively court Mitt Romney’s base has her looking more and more like Mitt Romney every day,' said Benjamin T. Jealous, a former N.A.A.C.P. president who initially supported Mr. Sanders. 'That’s not a good thing."'
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So Hillary Clinton fans, I don’t care what you say. Hillary and her New Democratic machine can shove it. If they're so concerned about Trump, they need to step up and tell Hillary Clinton to step aside. If enough of us do that she'll have no choice but to do so.

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CONGRESS ACCUSES HILLARY CLINTON OF PERJURY
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Hillary needs to be made to step aside for committing election fraud and trying to corrupt our democracy alone, but she also needs to step aside so she won't dump Trump right in our laps by default. The Democrats need to run someone with much less baggage than Hillary been has already been revealed to have, and the worst probably hasn’t even come out yet, because we don’t know what it was she was trying to hide with that private email server. But you can be assured that the opposition does, and they’re going to wait until just a few days before election day to drop it on us; then we’re going to end up with a President Trump. So if Hillary cares more about America than she does her own ambition (which I seriously doubt), she’ll voluntarily step aside. If it turns out that I’m right and she is more self-serving than patriotic, she doesn’t deserve to be president in the first place.

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Finally, I'm sure that a lot of Clinton lovers - both Black and White - are going to be absolutely furious at what I've said here. But that's only because it's absolutely meaningless to them what the Clintons have done to the Black community. That speaks volumes, and it also explains why Black lives don't matter, in spite of all the liberal rhetoric that we engage in. Here's where we've got to make Black lives matter, by bringing down corrupt politicians.
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Monday, August 01, 2016

.This will be an unwelcome comment but I believe we should shut off this thread at least overnight and have a space while we think about the officers killed today in Baton Rouge and the black former marine who shot them. And the families of all of them.by Flavius on Sun, 07/17/2016 - 11:28pm

Flavius,
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Your comment is not unwelcome at all, because it clearly points out a very serious area of hypocrisy that we have in this country. We'd have to shut down the site indefinitely if we decided to honor all of the innocent Black people and their families who are being brutally murdered by rogue cops - and this comes from the father of a federal agent, so I'm definitely not a cop hater. In fact, I love one.
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So the tension that led to the brutal murder of both these officers, and the scores of innocent Black people who have been killed is exactly what this thread is SUPPOSE to be about - unequal justice under the law, and its inevitable consequences.
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But what makes your comment particularly enlightening is out of all the threads on this site, why should we shutdown THIS particular thread? While your comment may have been completely innocent and well meaning, it speaks volumes regarding our social conditioning in this country. In fact, you couldn't have said more if I had written it for you myself. It begs the question, what makes one person's life more valuable than another? That's what all the hoopla is about. It seems that no matter how "liberal" some White people profess to be, Black lives just don't seem to matter as much - either by rogue cops, White juries, or even many Black accommodationists.

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But this is a question that White people need to be very concerned about - especially if they are a part of the working class - because we are now knee-deep in a class struggle, and race is meaningless to the corporate oligarchs and their political cronies. They'll send your child to his or her death in a heartbeat if it means they can make a dollar, as they've already demonstrated.

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So White working-class people should be very concerned about the growing devaluation of human life, and start putting the value of life in perspective. Because this hierarchy of injustice starts at the top with the political elites, and then it trickles it's way down. The elitists can do no wrong and we can do no right, unless we're in complete lockstep with their desires. Then the legal impunity of the elitists filters its way down to their surrogates, the rogue cop on the street, and then finally ends in the mass brutalization of the average citizen who is not in complete lockstep with their plutocratic agenda.
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And we can witness no better example of how that system works than the sham that took place in the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. Just imagine what would happen to you if you worked for the State Department and put classified files on your home computer. Do you think they would worry about your "intent?" I don't think so. What Hillary did is called "Gross (criminal) Negligence," and "Endangering National Security," both, very serious crimes. She should have, at the very least, lost her security clearance, but that would have prevented her from running for president. So in Hillary's case it was just fluffed off, while in another case, Sandra Bland was dragged from her vehicle, brutalized, and died under "suspicious circumstances" while in custody, for smoking a cigarette in her own car.
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So anyone who supports the double standard at work with respect to Hillary Clinton and Sandra Bland is guilty of supporting classism, plutocracy, and the perpetuation of the White supremacist system, and that includes President Obama. I hate to admit that, because I've always been a big supporter of Obama, but one cannot edit truth. We must follow it wherever it leads.

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And what's completely unbelievable about how blatant the class system has become is the fact that President Obama scheduled campaign appearances with Hillary even before the investigation was complete! Does that send any kind of signal to the investigators or what!!!?
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That said a lot to me. The most benevolent spin that one can put on Obama's actions is that it was politically clumsy. But Obama is not known for being a clumsy politician. He is known, however, for acknowledging the political lay of the land - that's why Bush and Cheney aren't in prison. So while I have always been a strong Obama supporter, I support truth, justice, and a fully functional democracy much more. I don't see President Obama, or any other politician, as my leader. I see them as my employees, and as one of his employers, I don't like what he did, at all. For that reason, I will always criticize him for failing to take action against Bush and Cheney, and now, I will always criticize him for this Clinton decision.
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I mean, this was a woman who tried to dog-whistled his assassination! So something MUST be going

JEEVES, GO FETCH ME A SENATOR . . . ANY ONE OF 'EM WILL DO.

on behind the scenes in this country that the American people aren't privy to. Obama's actions tell me that this situation has become much more ingrained in our system than most of us ever realized, and therefore, much more dangerous to our democracy.

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But this hierarchy of "justice" is nothing new; it's simply becoming more blatant, and much more pronounced. It started with the pardon of Richard Nixon, and then Reagan committed outright treason in the Iran-Contra affair, and then flooded the Black community with crack cocaine (with Bill Clinton's help) with complete impunity. Thereafter, George Bush Sr. sent our troops to die in Iraq, for the first time, in order to take his son, Neil Bush's, name out of the news after an investigation found him guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The story regarding the investigation was reported by UPI on June 29, 1990, and we invaded Iraq one month later. Then, of course, we had George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sending our troops back into Iraq where 4500 of our troops were killed, and countless others maimed for life (this time with Hillary Clinton's help) in order to enrich war profiteers.

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This kind of thing has been going on every since the corporate and political elitists found out just how gullible the American people have become when we bought into the supply-side economics scam. It's been open-house on the American people every since, and the American middle class has been in a downward spiral every since.
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Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
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Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. That's also what Bill Clinton did when he ripped the guts out of Glass-Steagall, and with the very same result.
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Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
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HERE ARE BUT A FEW OF THE GAMES RUN ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY THE ELITISTS WITH IMPUNITY

.Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion. . Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement. . Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name. . In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars. . After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served. .

Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression, so people of every race need to open their eyes, because we're being treated like pawns.
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So it hasn't been lost on me that no matter how much evidence is brought to the table about how unjust the Clintons have been to Black people - Bill’s role in flooding the Black community with crack cocaine, followed by the mass incarceration of Black people, and then creating the prison industrial complex - it's been like spittin' in the wind. It’s simply been either brushed off or outright denied and other issues are brought up in their place. The reason for that is regardless to what people say, or what their political persuasion, they've been conditioned to believe that Black lives don't matter. But now, just one or two White cops are killed and you want an evening of silence to commemorate their deaths. Are you completely blind to the gross hypocrisy in that!!!?

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It clearly demonstrates that regardless to how well-meaning many White people are, they just can't see life, death, or gross injustice from the perspective of a Black person. That's exactly why I'm often misunderstood as being militant, but it's also why I don't give a damn. Not all, but most White folks are completely blind to reality, along with many of their accommodationist Black stooges - though I suspect that many of the stooges choose to be blind, because it helps to promote their accommodationist agenda. But it can really be a frustrating thing to watch, because most people want to think that their fellow citizens have, at the very least, simple common sense. When they cease feeling that way this can be a very scary and lonely place. So I must admit, after what I've seen in this past primary year, and watching many of my fellow citizens just sitting on their hands and letting it happen, the chill is beginning to roll in on me.
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So the bottom line is this - while demonstrations do have their place, we'll never be able to resolve this problem by simply shaking our fists in the street and then going home to be misinformed and distracted by the five corporations that control everything that we see, hear, or read in the media. We've got to come together as a people and clean house in Washington. We've got to get rid of all the plutocrats at the top (like Trump and the Clintons), two-thirds or more of both houses of congress, and then take back our democracy. If we don't, it'll be you and your family's turn soon, because the plutocrats don't care any more about the White working class than they do Black people. When they send your children to war, send your jobs out of the country, or rob you of your lifesavings (and the Clintons have done all of those things), they're clearly demonstrating that your lives don't matter either - it's just not as politically acceptable to shoot you down in the street . . . yet.

Society Of Professional Journalists

Eric L. Wattree

Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.

BIO

Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.Eric L. Wattreehttp://www.whohub.com/wattree

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WHAT A MAN THINKS, IS WHO HE IS. THINK LIKE A MARINE - STRONG, RESOLUTE, AND WITH HONOR.

GOP CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

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The Hater

Am I a hater, you ask? You're damn right I'm a hater. I hate injustice. I hate hypocrisy. I also hate demagoguery, apathy, and the stupidity that allows it to exist. Hater? Absolutely. I'm a big time hater. I hate what I see happening to this country, and I hate watching the development of a culture that embraces ignorance with a stupid sense of pride. So yes, I am indeed a hater, but not only that - I'm a hater with a very low threshold for bullshit, so step off.